1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the mounting of electronic components. More particularly, the present invention relates to mounting electronic components to three-dimensional-surface substrates using molded sockets.
2. Disclosure Information
The attachment of electronic components to circuit board substrates is typically achieved by soldering. Various soldering techniques are used in the electronics industry, including the conventional practices of reflow soldering, wave soldering, and vapor-phase soldering. Each of these processes requires the use of metal alloy solders that process at relatively high temperatures. Furthermore, each of these processes ha, been developed for use with planar circuit boards.
Recently, interest has grown in the use of non-planar (i.e., "three-dimensional" or "curviplanar") circuit substrates as a more flexible design alternative to conventional planar circuit boards. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 1A, circuits and components which in the past were placed on rigid, planar circuit boards 60 with the boards then being attached by fasteners 64 to a molded plastic housing 62, are now being placed directly on an interior or exterior surface of the housing itself, as shown in FIG. 1B. In this type of arrangement, the surface of the molded housing 62 is typically metallized and the electronic components and circuitry are soldered thereto, the housing thus replacing the planar circuit board and serving as the substrate for the components and circuitry. This arrangement offers the advantage of integrating the electronics together with the structural housings or other adjacent molded structures, thus reducing the number of processing steps, eliminating unnecessary fasteners and other hardware 64, and reducing to overall product costs.
However, this type of integrated structure suffers from its inability to be processed using conventional soldering techniques, for at least two reasons. First, the non-planar surfaces of such integrated structures cause the structures to be incompatible with conventional soldering equipment, such as reflow ovens and the like, which can only process planar substrates. Second, the plastic resins used to make such integrated structures often cannot withstand the thermal excursions and/or chemical attack of conventional solder processing.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a way of integrating electronic circuitry with three-dimensional molded substrates in such a way that would eliminate the need for soldering altogether.